


We Don't Want the Bacon, (What  We Want is a Piece of the Divine)

by cognomen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1917, Gen, Great War, World War 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:11:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things war leaves behind, but one must trust that there is a greater plan. AU, World War 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Don't Want the Bacon, (What  We Want is a Piece of the Divine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outlawradio](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=outlawradio).



Ten years later they pass on the street, and it's the context that puts Cass off. Here, in the light of day, clean - if in a suit that had seen better days - Dean looks like he's in his element. It's such a marked change from the trenches - the battlefield - where everyone was _out_ of place.

In the Great War, Dean had been an anomaly - late to the war as all Americans were - and the trenches had never crushed him as they almost had Castiel. He had Dean to thank, indirectly, for his current enlightenment.

Castiel's regiment had been good to him. Jimmy had been well liked enough it seemed, and the field medic had explained Castiel's seeming confusion as a disruption of the cerebro-spinal fluid from repeated exposure to concussive artillery.

Shell shock.

The body had belonged to an Englishman, dazed and dying, alone and left behind with nothing to do but pray, and with very little idea how to do it. Castiel may have taken advantage of that in a willing vessel - permission without full understanding and with the coercion of pain and death was still permission. Still, he can feel how barely alive the body is, like a cage of gray fog always pushing on him. He has to shove down the pervading desire to simply let it lie down in the filth and die next to its comrades. The soul that remains is little more than a worn down hollow-eyed nub of a thing, barely enough for Castiel to work with, and yet it seems appropriate this way.

Everyone is scraping to get by in this war, Castiel finds it oddly compelling that he should, too. It helps him fit in a little - where 'alive' is defined in purely technical terms and not necessarily as a state of mental being.

He tells himself - once - that staying in this body is not punishment for failing to protect the charge he was given. Surely _that_ could not be seen as an act of disobedience, where he had been willing and acting, but just out of time so quickly that he could not orient himself into effect on this foreign plane of being in time to stop a bullet that had already flown.

Before, larger miracles have been worked than the simple restructuring of a few minutes in time so that a being that fell dead instead fell unharmed, but here - in a world of faith, God has commanded that subtlety be used. Anael forbids him from taking the death back, in a way that is both merciless and without reprimand. It is not an angel's place to judge another, even one in command.

Thousands of people died in the canal Mons, when the war was still moving forward instead of digging down. When land was being taken, instead of becoming a bloody, corpse riddled hell of a home. There had been two miracles in this Great War, both early as if to bolster the Entante for the horrors to come.

At Mons the Angels had spread their wings for the first time in thousands of years, shining brilliant light over the waterway - already choked with corpses and blood, scattering the horses of the German's cavalry charge. Unknowingly, they might have printed an angelic name on the death certificate of 'clean' warfare - horses were a wild element. Trenches would not bolt, or flee backward, even when filled with the light of a thousand angel's wings - or the light of a descending shell. They shared one trait with horses - when injured, they would often fall on their masters.

He isn't sure how his failure has separated him from his brothers, but here he is - and it seems he's left his keys on the other side of the locked door. He isn't alone - his Divine Grace is intact, some some small consolation. He has no orders. There is no line of communication, and suddenly Castiel discovers how difficult it is to operate on faith.

It's easy to follow obediently when there is a clearly defined course - but now he is living in the den of free will and guess work. He knows this was not how he was meant to operate- his compliance was once how he would have defined himself. The one word an angel wishes to see by his name in the Metatron's book.

Castiel - Venerating.

But here - here is the folly of Hurut and Marut, left too long in the company of Humanity - lords of sin and corruption, for whom forgiveness was invented.

And Dean, it was _Dean_ who convinced Castiel that there was a limit to what any angel with any remaining ounce of their god-given compassion could take. Dean picked and pulled and put things in his mouth until Cass began to crack, and Dean could hone in on that like he was a bloodhound. Castiel's quiet difference from the other soldiers seemed to be why Dean approached him in the first place.

In truth, if Castiel believed in accidents, he might say he'd come across Dean entirely by accident. In 1917, late, when the mud was beginning to freeze solid at night, Americans arrived on the western front.

Castiel would have welcomed the newcomer three years ago. Hell, maybe even last year, when he wasn't the only survivor of his regiment. Now he looks down on the bloodied, foreign uniformed body that has fallen in _his_ section of trench, just another casualty of taking a mile of no-man's land. The Americans had taken more in their initial advance - trotting behind the french Renaults - than anyone had moved the lines in months. They still had spirit, after sitting out the first three years of the war.

It actually takes an effort of conscience for Castiel to lean down and flip the man over so he doesn't drown in mud, facedown as he is. The overall impression he gets isn't much - bloodied, short brown hair that's plastered to his head with filth, young. _Alive_. This much he knows without even having to check for a pulse. He'll survive, if he doesn't drown in the foot of waste to either side of the duck boards, or take infection, or get shot again.

There are rats lingering just beyond reach, hopeful for a chance that Castiel won't let them have. He picks the American up, hoisting him over one shoulder and keeping one eye on the sky for incoming shells or grenades. The stretcher bearers won't be out this far for hours, they had to follow in the path of the advance, slogging at times through waist-high mud and four men to a stretcher was at times not enough to get their burden back through all the ruined ground and over all the corpses.

Instead, he drags the unconscious soldier into the dugout.

Castiel sits patiently by the cot-side for whatever hours he is otherwise unoccupied, ignoring the chill of the mud that seeps through the knees of his uniform trousers. He understands cold, can feel the unpleasant effects on Jimmy's body, but in a more detailed way. Cells do not operate efficiently in the slowed blood flow. They loose elasticity and begin to shut down. It takes only the barest effort of Castiel's will to ignore this.

The American is silent for nearly two days, half unconscious. His body is fighting off infection and chill at the same time. Castiel gives him all the blankets he can find spare - when they have been boiled and dried to rid them of lice. He waits during the day, though at night he is called to scout the enemy lines. He's been lucky in the eyes of his compatriots. He always returns from his reconnaissance. None have ever guessed that this was an unnatural talent. He had of course been shot once or twice, but the absence of a wound meant most soldiers believed him when he claimed otherwise.

On the second night since the American had come into his care, he crawls forward into no-man's land, patient and quiet. The ground between lines is churned up mud and nothing else. Nothing but shell fragments, corpses, bullet casings, gore, rats and refuse anyway. When he can hear the Germans, who sound equally cold and miserable, he slides down belly first into an old shell crater and waits. The Germans know this ploy, the most rudimentary of spying efforts, but sometimes they still slip.

Tonight their spirits are low. The Americans have brought much needed reinforcement to the western front, and the Germans have only lost ground since. They are hoping that Austria-Hungary sends reinforcements soon.

Nothing of note - seemed with any luck neither side would press for an advance the next day. Castiel has just started to move, working the cramps out of the muscles he is allowing to lie unnaturally still, when a flare arcs into the sky overhead and floods his position with a brilliant phosphorus light.

He doesn't know how to panic - in fact he knows the sensation only by description, but at his core, in what's left of his vessel's awareness, it sparks to life. He shuts it down, along with the rest of Jimmy's limited awareness, with a sudden forcefulness that he feels squelch some of the remaining will out of it.

Castiel resolves to feel apologetic later. An alarm is raised as he shuffles backwards, and he knows he has forty yards of mud and un-even footing to cross. He stoops low, keeps his shoulders hunched forward to present a smaller target, moves as quickly as he can.

Pistol shots splatter the mud at his heels, but it's not the Lugers he's worried about so much as a Mauser-and-spotter team getting organized enough to hit him. Damage was inconvenient, and the 'luckier' he got, the more attention it drew.

He makes the crumbling sandbag embankment as the flare light begins to fade. The Great War is all about reminding one that 'home free' should never be taken for granted, and as he drops into the trench, a .792 round takes him through the chest.

It's some consolation that it's a Mauser and not the German's favorite Maschinengewehr.

In the overall scheme of things, this is nothing. Castiel simply erases the damage from being, in a fraction of time even his uniform coat is whole - if dirty. The problem is that his vessel's blood, when it exploded out of his chest in a messy splatter, had landed all over the Soldier standing with his back pressed against the opposite wall of the trench.

The American's pistol was raised, unwavering. Obviously, some internal debate was going on about what he had just witnessed.

"I'm not a German." Castiel says carefully. He finishes brushing himself off - totally useless, as he's plastered with mud all over - in slow, un-threatening motions. The Mauser round was damage enough for one day, he'd rather not have to further undo the round from the American's Colt.

"No shit." The soldier replies, his eyes wide, alert. "What _are_ you?"

Castiel is pleased to see him improved this much, though his timing could have been more convenient.

"Lieutenant Novak." Castiel gives the answer he has come to learn is expected of him. "Her Majesty's Infantry."

The American looks the picture of skeptical for a long moment. Then he shakes his head in clear denial of Castiel's claim. The blood spattered on his face and clothes gives the angel little chance to dispute the reality of his injury.

"Like hell." The American spits, keeping his 1911 level.

Castiel does not feel threatened, but can understand that he should.

"You were shot." The American says, flatly.

Castiel lifts his hands slowly, and displays the unblemished front of his uniform.

"I was. " He doesn't bother to lie.

"So what are you? A demon? A vampire?" The American's eyes are a hard, intense green. Castiel can see that he has pushed aside the veil of ignorance that most of humanity embraces.

This American has seen the things that keep children up at night. Stood up to them, Castiel would guess. He suspects the round chambered in the 1911 is silver.

"An angel." Castiel answers at last, and isn't surprised when the response is the report of the colt firing. The bullet punches cleanly through him, just to the left of his heart. The trench is narrow enough that by taking advantage of the American's surprise when Castiel unmakes this wound, too, he can close his hand over the Colt's automatic action after the second shot.

The slide tears a long furrow of flesh from his palm, and the spent shell is trapped against the heel of his hand, burning, but the American unable to shoot a third time with his slide held open in the recoil position.

"We should move inside." Castiel says, "And talk."

"Sure thing, pal." Surrendering his hold on the gun when Castiel does not relent to his tugging, the American goes for his knife.

"Don't stab me." Castiel says evenly. He's not sure what the American is expecting, but the request doesn't appear to be it. It's as much of a warning as Castiel will give. War hasn't made him impatient so much as practical.

Looking between the knife in his hand and Castiel, the soldier decides he can defend himself if the angel attacks. Castiel is curious what the world has done to make this young man into such a thing - unable to believe in angels because everything horrible has taken up all of his belief.

He turns and holds open the mud-flap of the dugout. Inside, his pack is opened, the contents of his webbing scattered, and he guesses his Iron Ration has been defiled. Seemed at least that the American wouldn't be bashful of accepting food.

It's just a matter of waiting, and Castiel lowers himself onto the cot, waiting until the American's curiosity wins out. Castiel is managing the valve on the gas lamp sitting on the duckboard on empty munitions crates that serves as a table.

"So that's it?" The soldier asks as he pushes aside the mud flap. "Angels don't fight back?"

"Not against _you_." Castiel has always favored answering simply and with the truth. "I pulled you out of the mud. If I thought you were a threat it would have been easier to let you drown."

For his trouble, the American splashes Jimmy's face with some of the least pure holy water Castiel has ever experienced. Castiel wipes it away with the sleeve of his uniform.

This satisfies the American, when it has only the effect of making Castiel's vessel wet.

"I'm Castiel." He says, shaking the last drops of water from Jimmy's hands. It's become brown from the contact - like everything else, his vessel is coated in mud. He waits, and the American screws the lid back onto the silver flask he's holding, almost sheepishly.

"It's Dean." He finally introduces himself. "So you're really a...?"

"I wasn't lying." Castiel answers.

-

Dean seems to accept his answer - with only the occasional penetrating stare or splash of holy water when he thinks Castiel isn't expecting it. He goes so far as to brew Castiel a cup of tea with the stuff, and seems almost disappointed when Castiel only thanks him for remembering to use chloride of lime before blessing it. He quickly notices that Castiel does not eat his rations, and helps himself to the extra food - such as it is.

Castiel never asks what Dean should be doing. If Dean is guilty of desertion, Castiel is also. Dean makes himself useful, and Jimmy's regimental commander doesn't mind that the hands taking up the tasks they were forty men short for were American.

"You know what I miss?" Dean asks, scraping the last of the potted meat from Castiel's Iron Ration out of its tin with a finger. He plunges this payload into his mouth with a look of bliss - hunger being the best seasoning, as Castiel is led to understand. "Root beer. Pie."

Castiel has never eaten either, never eaten anything in fact. He looks calmly at Dean, unable to understand.

"Don't tell me you _like_ this canned stuff?" Dean holds up the emptied tin, and Castiel wonders if he realizes how silly it is to even ask that question of an angel, if he's just talking so he can focus on his own voice instead of the slow thrum of the shell launchers approaching the front lines on the other side.

There is no way for the infantry to fight the heavy artillery. The battle plan in such situations is to put one's back to the wall of the trench and look up. Unspoken, but implied, is the one order they always have in this war: _Survive_. When the shells stopped falling, Castiel had a small folding mirror that he could attach to the sight of his Lee-Enfield, which he propped up with a leg braced on the opposite side of the trench as he crouched on the fire step and extended it up over the lip into the dangerous air above. When the Allies began to advance, they stood up and fired into the lines until they retreated - trenches were at least easy to defend. They presented a much smaller target than those poor souls out in no- man's land, with no cover but perhaps the corpses and shell craters if they happened to survive getting shot.

The Germans would give up pressing when they discovered there were survivors. Infantry did poorly against other Infantry, too - if they were entrenched. Before the Americans arrived, the battle had been fought in yards. Feet, some days.

Now, Castiel's quarter-mile has become a tertiary line - in the support group behind the front line which has extended further forward into the german's trenches than it ever has before. There are occasionally attempts to retake the lost ground, but so far they have met with much less success than prior. The Allied troops are tired - as hungry and demoralized as the British.

When the shells start to fly overhead, and the forward trenches fill with screams of anguish, Castiel sits on the firing ledge and waits. He props Jimmy's Lee-Enfield rifle up on his leg and peers up the long barrel to watch the crude periscope above for action.

"How did you wind up stuck here in these trenches, anyway?" Dean asks, sitting beside him and fidgeting. Castiel sits perfectly still, and doesn't bother to look at the American as he answers.

"I was left behind somehow." Castiel wonders now if, like Dean has been, he is presumed dead. Of course, that would imply that God had some ability to miss him, and Castiel does not like to think about that. "I was supposed to protect someone at Mons."

It's not out of fear, but an emotion more akin to petulance which keeps him from acknowledging that his mission has quite failed. Part of it, he might claim, is that he's had to get so close inside this shell to keep it breathing and upright. It requires constant supervision, and the few times his mind has wandered, he's found the life fading rapidly out of it. It's an annoyance - and that he can feel annoyed at all is testament to how it's affected him.

Yet, here he is and with his new charge, he suspects - doesn't know, not with his lines to heaven cut - that his purpose is still divine. Either God's plan is this, or Castiel has too much faith that there _is_ a plan for him specifically, and that he isn't forgotten.

Castiel has never worried about having _too much_ faith before.

"Yeah?" Dean asks, watching Castiel's mirror too, and briefly they make indirect eye contact, before Castiel's attention slides away to the flying mud at the front lines.

"I came with my Dad." Dean says, and something in his tone of voice when he names his father strikes a chord in Castiel. It's _venerating_. "He said there had to be something unnatural behind all this blood shed, and that we should fight against it to protect the world my little brother is going to have to live in."

Castiel isn't sure what kind of answer Dean expects. He doesn't give one.

"Sammy's too young for the Draft, but Dad's still out there - somewhere ahead." Castiel doesn't think that should sound so familiar, but it does.

"He hasn't come back for you?" Castiel asks, keeping Jimmy's voice level.

"Nah." Dean brushes off the hurt. "He has other things to worry about - and he knows he made me capable of taking care of myself."

There is a tiny little revelation in these casual words. That _his_ father could be relying on his faith in Castiel had never occurred to the angel. He feels guilty, almost, for learning a lesson in love and faith from Dean of all people before he realizes that it was a part of faith to take lessons from the unexpected.

He can tell that underneath all the swagger and bravado, that the absolute horror of the war is not what Dean expected. At night, Dean twitches in his sleep, kicks his blankets around, dreaming of the hell that waits just beyond the flap that shut out the filth and rain only on the best of days.

The first time he reaches out to push away Dean's nightmares it's unconscious. In dream-scape, at least, they should be free of cold and death. It gives him something to do other than to sit, and drink cold tea - if one could even call the resultant vaguely tan water that one got after using the same tea bag more than ten times 'tea'. He'd thought, once, about taking up smoking - after all the others in their mile seemed to derive their only pleasure from rolling tobacco into cigarettes and smoking it - but Cas found it more useful to trade away his tobacco rations.

Castiel does not know what dreams are like. Instead, he shares an old memory with Dean, reaching out consciousness to consciousness in a way that was common to angels.

Dean becomes a lucid dreamer when he sees Castiel standing beside him in a sudden change of dream-scape. He ignores the sunset - the very first that Castiel remembers, from a time before anything on the planet had lungs. It's beautiful - as sunsets are - and you can see forever without the human-brought haze of industrialization.

"Of all the things to dream about." He says, throwing his hands up. "Corporal Crazypants."

"I'm sorry, Dean." Castiel apologizes, more for the lack of a proper dream than his inclusion in it. After a long moment of silence, he continues. "Is that really how you think of me?"

It doesn't matter, of course. Castiel is gauging his effectiveness as an integrated member of humanity - Angels always seemed to have trouble fitting in. All but the one, anyway.

"Sure." Dean says, rolling his eyes. He's thinking why he should have to explain himself in his own dream.

"I'm not a corporal, Dean." Castiel corrects, at least one of the mistakes. He isn't insane, either. "I am a Lieutenant.

"Yeah well, this is hardly a swell dream." He looks around once at the unspoiled beauty and seems thoroughly unable to appreciate it.

"I would atone," Castiel answers slowly, looking out at the sunset and attempting to discern what exactly is displeasing about it. "I have little experience with dreams."

After a moment, he realizes Dean is looking at _him_, an intricate expression on his features as if he couldn't possibly have expected that answer.

"Are you doing this?" He asks after a moment, and Castiel can only nod.

"I have never actually dreamed." He confesses. "I do not know what they are like."

"In dreams, you can do whatever you want, Cass." Dean smiles. "No consequences."

Castiel realizes that Dean is simplyfiying. of course one does not usually get to direct the flow of one's dreams. Rather, as he understood, the process had partly to do with the subconscious and the mind's need to do something with the large amounts of extraneous information gathered in the course of a day.

"You're thinking about this too much, man." Dean says, and then takes control.

In the space of an eyeblink, they're at a drugstore in Kansas, and Dean is leaning on the counter in his white undershirt and jeans. His hair needs a cut, but he's still a soldier, even in this more relaxed posture.

He orders them both root beer floats from the man behind the counter. Castiel isn't certain what to do with the one Dean presses into his hands.

Dean drinks his with his eyebrows raised expectantly, then wipes froth off his upper lip with a blissful expression.

"Well?" Dean prompts after a moment. Castiel finds it interesting to watch him here, more at home and in someplace of comfort. He doesn't miss the details - the faint slouch in Dean's posture. How he looks clean, well-rested, in a way that Castiel has never had a chance to witness on the front.

It's about the time that dean turns a pointed expression on Castiel and brings his cup up to his mouth in a slow and wildly exaggerated motion that Castiel realizes what he wants.

"I don't need to eat." He says, looking down - the ice cream in the cup he's holding is melting into the soda, resulting in a tan, foamy liquid.

"No, but it's a dream." Dean encourages.

When Castiel realizes that Dean _expects_ it of him, some old instinct kicks in. Castiel is made to follow order and live up to expectations - and his pride is not such that he balks at them when they come from someone human.

He doesn't enjoy the sharp bite of the root beer across his tongue - mellowed by the half-melted ice cream. Or at least, that's not what sparks a long dormant pleasure in his being - it's following the order that wakes happiness in Castiel.

"It's good." He says, after considering the taste and the sensation it awakes within him both.

Dean smiles brightly, and claps Castiel on the shoulder, obviously pleased. Castiel supposes it must be okay to enjoy this reward - so long as he is careful. Angels must bend their knees to the greatest of the Lord's creations, but ultimately Castiel still knows where his orders come from.

"When we beat Jerry," Dean promises, "I'll show you for real."   
-

They become a curious paradox. Dean shows him more of what the world is like, beyond or without the touch of war. Castiel, in turn, keeps him free from nightmares. It is brief respite, like a flowering oasis in the midst of all the mud.

Dean often deflects Castiel's questions away from himself - a mechanism the angel recognizes as defense, but does not understand the need for.

Castiel, for his part , answers honestly to all of Dean's questions. It is a mutual expectation by now - Castiel has begun to anticipate Dean's expectancy for as complete and truthful an answer as possible. He enjoys Dean's approval - the fact that he can be one certainty in war.

"Cass," Dean says one day, mashing his rations together into a paste. "What does this mean I should believe?"

It's such a subjective question that Castiel has trouble beginning to put his answer to words.

In part, Dean means by '_this_'; war. There are horrors here in this Great War, devilish applications and inventions of technology. Killing has become an impersonal science. The question of who deserved to live was answered simply with 'whoever has the newest gun'.

'_This_' also means himself, Castiel. If Dean is to believe he is angelic, he must also acknowledge the divinity from which such creatures are sprung.

In third part, Dean has indicated his entire personal experience - which Castiel is only familiar enough with to know that Dean bases his doubts in things more real than almost all of humanity uses as excuses.

"That's a complicated question." Castiel qualifies his answer. "But you do not want this resolution from _me_."

Dean only could have asked the question of Castiel to challenge the answer. He needed fuel to reaffirm his current beliefs - or lack thereof.

Meeting Dean's eyes, Castiel allows himself a longer look into them, challenging back. A question of faith requires first a personal answer, and then a belief that sometimes one must trust an answer from without to be the most correct, even if one did not understand it.

Anger rises in Dean's expression when Castiel refuses to answer him. He suspects that Dean's upset comes more from Dean's own lack of an answer, but the disappointment stings Castiel somewhere deep and private. He has only this function and expectation at current, and he has betrayed it.

"I'm sorry, Dean." He says, realizing that he has been so close to human for so long that he means it. That he _can_ mean it.

Dean huffs out a sigh and rakes his hands through his hair once, standing it all up and backwards. It's stiff with mud and lack of proper washing. "Yeah, alright. I guess it wasn't a fair question anyway."

For Castiel, the forgiveness is absolution.  
-

"I miss music." Dean says, out of the blue. There's a corpse in the trench with them, wired with his communications equipment, but it's about as full of holes as he is. Dean shoos the rats and disengages the heavy equipment from the man's shoulders. The wooden housing is smashed where the man fell on it, and the wires inside spill out like coils of rope. He fusses with the knobs a bit before he gives up. "I guess there's no music on the radio anyway, since Wilson shut that all down."

Dean dumps the ruined apparatus on the ground, and Castiel puzzles over the knobs for a second before he realizes that it's a hopeless mess, wet inside with blood and trench mud. For a moment, he feels a certain kinship with it, and when he pats it affectionately, it gives a crackling burst of static that jumps Dean so badly he hits his head against the low roof of the shelter.

"What'd you do?" He asks, turning around suddenly to peer at Castiel with wide eyes.

"I don't know." Castiel touches the dial and the radio emits a low electronic whine. When he concentrates he can feel something almost electric about it when he touches it. After a moment, he considers, and tries something on a whim. Ever so softly, he encourages it with his true will, the barest whisper of his angelic voice, and it flickers to life, broadcasting some musical program from the past. It does this because Castiel wills it, and for the barest of moments he is almost amazed. It's so easy to forget what one is, when one is so close to the earth and humanity.

Dean closes his eyes to listen to the music, and for a moment, Castiel also indulges. They sit like that for several long minutes, as a hit from across the years strains tinnily out of the radio.

_Let nations arbitrate their future troubles  
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.  
There'd be no war today  
If mothers all would say   
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier. _

The radio began to whine and fade again, and Castiel realizes it is his attention dying away from it, a soft thud in the trench attracting his attention half a second too late to do anything about the Stielhandgranate at their feet.

For half a second, the world is light and noise. It seems impossibly loud, and Castiel puts himself in it's path as best he can on instinct. After that his attention is taken up fully by unmaking a thousand tiny instants in time, where fractions of the metal casing pierce Jimmy's body and rip through, or lodge, or simply pass by and tear furrows.

Irrevelantly, Jimmy's mind is running the chorus of Over There through the tiny remainder of it's conscious existence, and the whole thing seems to take forever until he can look down and see what a ruin the grenade has made of Dean.

_Fatal_, Castiel assesses in an agonizing instant. Dean is not yet dead, but even accounting for some of the blood being Jimmy's, there is too much. He doesn't look lower than Dean's chest, before he sinks down to his knees to lift Dean's head out of the filth.

Castiel is certain that one choice will reconcile him - there is one thing he is meant to do. Is it to protect Dean, now, the way he couldn't take care of his initial charge? The idea of moving forward on his own initiative and guesswork only balks him - at least in the area where he will change something so major as a death.

He has done nothing but play it safe - he has never gone too far from where he had been left, in the hopes that he will be remembered and recovered. In his time away, he has learned how tied faith and free will are - one must either move forward as one can with faith as a firm anchor, or move forward as one would, discarding faith in something greater. Castiel finds the thought of either terrifying - as much as he can feel such an emotion, which is more strongly than he would have admitted.

He does not _want_ free will, or faith. Castiel would much rather return to what he had before, which was an absolute confidence and a divinely given ability to follow orders, but he will not give up his belief that God knows where he is. That means what Castiel is going through has meaning - God wants him to learn this, to move forward along this path that has been laid out for him.

Dean reaches up weakly and grips his sleeve, perhaps only for comfort. He looks ashen, delicate. It's wrong, out of place. He has seen Dean look unsettled, uncomfortable, and nervous at times - but never _afraid_ before.

"Am I going up?" He asks, putting on a lopsided grin that Castiel can see through like a book. "I mean, do you know?"

"You aren't going anywhere." Castiel says. He covers Dean's hand with both of Jimmy's, then transfers his touch onto the wound in the American's chest. Dean winces as he brushes against ruined muscles and bone beneath, but only for a second. Castiel times his breaths, matches them to Dean's - puts their very cores at synch as he reaches out to undo the damage done to Dean's body.

Dean grabs the lapels of Jimmy's uniform in shock, and Castiel lets him hold on to them both for the time it takes him to reverse and rebuild. It is not as easy as undoing the damage to his own vessel - and as if in protest the world around them goes white, the mud in the trenches first hardening, then turning to glass.

The war - in all it's great roaring, groaning, gasping noise goes silent. Here is the third miracle - greater than Mons, greater than opposing armies crawling out of their trenches on the day of Christ's birth and sharing what little they had - in food and spirits both. Here is the miracle of Dean Winchester, and an angel learning what is faith and free will.

To say that it changes things between them is apt, but perhaps not an entire assessment of the situation. The whole war seems to change from that point - and twelve months after the Americans came to the western front, Armistice is signed.

No one can explain why, after weeks of cease-fire on the western front, Lieutenant Jimmy Novak lies down in his trench and dies. It is not an isolated incident, and many assume that these soldiers are incapable of re-attaching themselves to an idea of peace.

Castiel isn't certain what God's plan entails for an angel of his specific and unique set of talents and ability, but he has faith that he will come to see exactly what his purpose is in time. He finds a new vessel, and if it looks a little like Jimmy had, it may be blamed on fondness.

Dean recognizes him anyway, ten years later in a drug store, in Kansas. He takes one look, and orders two root beer floats.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The title is taken from the 1918 Hit, [We Don't Want the Bacon (What We Want is a Piece of the Rhine)](http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/wedontwantthebacon.htm). I am slowly becoming familiar with more WW1-era music, and there were a lot of tentative titles for this piece from _ I Didn't Raise My Son to be a Soldier_ or _ Over There_, but none stuck like this one. In part, Dean's obsession with bacon made it, in the other part I could make a terrible pun with it. There is some music in this fic, I feel music is important to any SPN themed piece, because it is already so important in the show.
> 
> 2\. The timeline in this is odd and not-exactly-linear, in present tense. With Castiel being the narrative party, I feel I can get away with this. Cass must surely experience time a little differently.
> 
> 3\. In addition, I tried to remember to transfer ownership of a lot of things to Jimmy, instead of Castiel all the time. Obviously the crude workings of a human body are a necessity, but that still does not make one feel ownership. If I should animate a puppet, swinging his arms around via sticks, I do not think of them as my arms. This did not always stick, and I would have liked to fix it, but time did not allow for a through re-editing. It shall have to just be a particular quirk of this piece.
> 
> 4\. Trench life sucked. There is no sex in this piece, which is unusual for me, but I could not in good conscience write it considering the filth, lice, and lack of treatment for STD's. Really, you did not want gonorrhea in the Great War - there were no antibiotics and the treatment was... _highly unpleasant_
> 
> 5\. The other two songs referenced in this piece are [](http:)First World War.Com is an invaluable resource and an excellent place to start if you are interested in learning more about what was, IMO, the more fascinating of the two World Wars. Also please don't hesitate to drop me a line and I will gladly geek out with you about it. I am lucky enough to have access to the WW1 museum in Kansas City, and the intent to visit it often.
> 
> I also apologize for the length of the piece, which I intended to be shorter, then longer, but overall I am happy with the balance I have achieved. These historical crossovers always seem to run away with me.


End file.
